


Ronan and The Way He Loves

by L_C_Weary



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (of some sort), Character Study, Light Angst, M/M, Noah Knows Things, One-Sided Noah Czerny/Ronan Lynch, POV Noah Czerny, Pre-Canon, loving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 18:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17565524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_C_Weary/pseuds/L_C_Weary
Summary: The thing with Ronan and loving was that he loved so much and so carelessly, he forgot how to care about himself. The thing with Noah and loving was that he knew he was less complicated than Ronan, and Noah, above everything else, loved Ronan Lynch. So he made a habit out of sorting the things Ronan loved.





	Ronan and The Way He Loves

**Author's Note:**

> Not first language. No beta. You can figure the rest.

The thing with Ronan and loving was that it came natural to him. He had a smile made for war and like a good patriotic soldier adored his country, he possessed the same unconditional and intense love towards things he treasured.

The thing with Ronan and loving was that sometimes only a very fine line separated it from his hate. He not only hated things because those made him unable to love something else, but in some cases he loved someone too violently for it to be called love anymore. The feeling he carried around in himself became hate just as fast as it could turn back into love. Not that it ever did.

The thing with Ronan and loving was that he loved so much and so carelessly, he forgot how to care about himself. It became a foreign language to Ronan, like English in his dreams. He spent so much time learning Latin, he lost the ability to understand or give a shit about English.

The thing with Noah and loving was that he knew he was less complicated. He just loved stuff and people, he didn't build altars in his mind, he didn't commit time contemplating, he just loved. He loved his sisters, he loved glitter, he loved skateboarding, he loved Gansey and his quest, he loved the Aglionby, he loved Adam and his courage. And Noah, above everything else, in his dead life, trying his best not feel obsessed or insensitive, loved Ronan Lynch.

Contrary to the popular belief, loving Ronan wasn't difficult, or not more than loving anyone else. Sure, it required energy and dedication, but loving him was not challenging in any unusual way. No matter how needlessly complicated Ronan made himself feel, he was still just a boy, craving to be loved.

So Noah made a habit out of sorting the things Ronan loved, for him. Not that he ever presented it to Ronan or even talked about it. Noah just kept neatly packed boxes and shelves inside his mind, things he liked to play around with, when Ronan got home drunk, depressed or furious, on luckier nights all of them. On those nights, Ronan fell on his bed, murmured some swearwords and either tortured himself for hours with awful thoughts he collected during the day, or tried to force himself to sleep by listening to his horrible music.

Noah liked Ronan's bed, for very simple reasons, and Ronan didn't mind him staying there, so Noah just laid there every night, while Ronan drank beer, kicked things over and battled his nightmares. It wasn't boring, exactly, however it got repetitive quickly. Therefore, Noah started categorising.

Firstly, he made categories by the type of the loved things of Ronan Lynch.

There were the _Things_. Fast cars, black nights, farming, the fries at Nino's, the Monmouth. There were the _Feelings_. Everything that the Barn was. Dreaming. Speeding on an empty highway. Gansey's quest. The feeling of waking up actually relaxed. Then there were the _People_. Neil Lynch, Aurora Lynch, Declan Lynch, Matthew Lynch, his God, Richard Gansey, Adam Parrish, Joseph Kavinsky and – hopefully - Noah Czerny too.

Noah was always careful to keep himself objective when he was listing himself. He knew Ronan loved him, but putting himself on a list like that, to be something Ronan Lynch adored was too permanent, too hurtful, because Noah knew he was going to lose it. He had a finite number of days to go before it was over and knowing the exact date he was going to stop existing, sometimes terrified Noah. He knew, on shittier days, Ronan felt the same way. From time to time, his dreams told him it was the end and Ronan woke up with such surprise, it hurt Noah.

Now, the other category system Noah made was, how those loved things made Ronan feel. 

There were the things that were easy to love, even for someone as messy as Ronan. Matthew or cows or long songs that let Ronan forget his life didn't actually have a soundtrack. 

Then came those, which were still easy to feel, but harder to comprehend, those who Ronan both loved and hated at some point in his life. The Aglionby, for example, or Declan Lynch. Or Joseph Kavinsky, or dreaming.

And then there were the things that destroyed Ronan every time he let himself feel. Mostly his father or his father's God.

Noah knew where he would fit in this categorisation and he almost made himself gloomy that he wasn't special enough to get into any higher rank than to the _easily loved ones_ , when he remembered what a weird thing it was to be loved by Ronan.

Ronan, no matter how bruised he got from caring, never considered it a vulnerability, which was something Noah had trouble believing in the first place. He knew from first-hand experience that loving could easily be your demise. Or your best friend's and his skateboard's, depending on how you look at it.

Ronan got himself into things that had the potential to hurt him, because his sense of right and wrong told him to do so. He didn't do it to gain something, he just did it because he wanted to give. So, sometimes he loved because it was inconvenient, because it hurt, because it made him feel alive, like he was an actual thing, not something out of a dreamer's imagination.

Ronan loved Gansey because he was the only solid point in his life, but he also loved him because Gansey was fascinating and mesmerising, because Ronan knew the first moment he met him that Gansey needed to be loved. Ronan probably didn’t realise it back then or put it to words like that, yet he felt it in his bones that Gansey deserved to be cherished by someone so intense and unforgiving as Ronan Lynch.

Ronan loved Kavinsky because he gave Ronan the reassurance that he wasn't going mad. Not that he could pinpoint what it was that made "K" so special. Noah could see it. He could see Ronan’s dreams and he could see Kavinsky’s desires, the two things making up the whole picture. Ronan also loved Joseph, because no one loved Kavinsky and therefore Ronan was drawn to him, in his nature to give Joseph something he had deserved in the past, now only the dying flame of it beckoning Ronan.

Ronan loved Adam because just a half-smile from Adam made his heart beat faster and his day a bit brighter, but also because Adam was only loved in a convoluted, messed up way by his mother, before Gansey or Ronan came into picture. And Adam was so lost in his own misery, Ronan couldn't escape the magnetic pull, the desire to show him, what it was like to be free and worshipped.

In this regard Noah wasn't such different, or at least he flattered himself with this thought. He wanted to believe Ronan loved him because they had what best friends had to have - without the weird and dangerous co-dependency thing, Ronan and Gansey did so enthusiastically to each other. Ronan's and Noah's friendship was simpler in a way Noah thought he already understood, when he was alive and at the side of Barrington.

Yet he wanted to be loved by Ronan just because. He wanted to be worthy of Ronan's adoration, he wanted to be cherished by something so unbelievable and scary as the Ley Lines or Glendower or Neil Lynch's God. He wanted to be loved by a dreamer.

It was beyond him why Ronan saw himself as unlovable. He had to see it. Noah saw it and he had been dead for seven years. It took Gansey half a week to love him, it took Kavinsky six late night drag races, thirteen insults, two self-satisfied smirks, twenty one middle fingers and five dreams. For Adam it would take scheming, rents, a framed murderer and dream ravens, but Noah wasn't supposed to know that just yet. He just felt it in his bones, even if they were - technically - discarded somewhere far away.

Noah didn’t even have ideas in those days, his thoughts weren't real anymore, he just had hunches, a lot of them, but just hunches. And even if they proved to be right, they often felt ill-timed or false in some way, despite being true. Despite all the things he felt before those happened.

There were things that were easier to know. Regularity and experienced helped. For example, he knew Ronan was going to come home from somewhere - if smelling like the damp Earth, from the border of the Barns, if smelling like whiskey, from Kavinsky's substance party, if smelling like cheap French fries, from speeding on the highway, too alone to be comfortable. He knew Ronan was going to be furious and buzzing with energy, he was going to spend some time walking up and down his room, let it be a minute or a few hours it didn't matter to Noah, and then Ronan was going to bury himself between pillows, face down, trying to block out the world, unsuccessfully.

He was going to wait for Noah to put his ice cold hand on Ronan's temple to sooth him. Then the wonderful dream boy was going to sigh with relief, close his eyes and will himself into sleep, before he would wake up a few hours later to work on the miniature version of Henrietta with Gansey. And the ghost of a boy that was left of Noah Czerny was going to be left haunted by his love for the most beautiful young man that was built of dreams and scary emotions.

And one day Noah Czerny was going to stop existing, he was going to die permanently, he was going to disappear, and still his heart was going to be heavy with his love for Ronan Lynch.

**Author's Note:**

> (Find me on [tumblr](http://answermywearyquery.tumblr.com/).)


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